


Ready to Comply

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky's ten words, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Skinny Steve, UST, bucky pov, post-serum Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky looks over, holding Steve’s gaze. His throat feels tight, hard to swallow. “Thought I was never going to see daylight again.”</p><p>But what he really means is, Thought I was never going to see you again.</p><p>--</p><p>An examination of the ten phrases used to control the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready to Comply

**Author's Note:**

> am i the only one absolutely obsessed with the words used to control the winter soldier???? like, why did they choose them? what significance are they?? what Russian assassin leader picked out the word 'daybreak' to control his spy assassin? i need to know, guys, please

**L O N G I N G.**

 

What is longing?

It's dancing all night with everyone except the one person you want. It's a glance over in the middle of the night, half asleep and muddled with want, eyelids barely open and the tuft of blond hair sticking out of the blankets is shining in the moonlight. It's dizzy, it's low in his stomach, it's small shoulders tight with anger.

Everyone likes Steve after the super soldier serum with his big strong arms, narrow hips, the way he fills out his uniform, but Bucky looks at him and still thinks of the Steve from before, _his_ Steve, who stood a foot shorter than him and fought with everything he had. That Steve, the one with ribs sticking out and nose too big for his face, that's the Steve he always knew, always thought about late at night when he should've been sleeping.

He feels it strongest the moment he gets the draft, before he's even properly left Brooklyn. Standing in their empty kitchen with the letter in his hand and this soaring feeling in his head as the dark print blurs in his eyesight - he knows then that he might be leaving and never coming back. The sudden spike of pure unbidden longing makes him close his eyes, because he's been yearning for the same person for as long as he can remember but it's only now, standing in the kitchen with the enlistment letter in his hand, that he has to accept that his pretend future will never come true. Suddenly he's not longing for just a person but for an entire lifetime, watching it all pass and fall away before his eyes.

It goes like: watching Steve get more and more successful with his drawing, watching Steve fall in love with some dame down the street, being best man at Steve's wedding, godfather to Steve's children, growing older and older and watching as the blond hair turns gray and the smile lines grow deeper.

It looks like: big broad hands spread wide, trying to suppress a twitch of amused lips, eyes looking down at the ground and then up at Bucky through his eyelashes, the slope of Steve's spine as he lays on his stomach and sleeps with just an undershirt on.

Bucky crumples the letter in his fist, lifting his face to the ceiling and opening his eyes again. White flat ceiling broad above him; he realizes he's never really looked at this ceiling before, ever seen the water spots damaging the corner or the flakes of white peeling off in the center. He might leave and never see this god damn ceiling ever again. And he's not going to have his impossible future. He's not going to have any of it. But still he wants, he wants all the things he doesn't deserve and can't possibly obtain, and this is what longing is, this is longing.

 

**R U S T E D.**

 

It may be rusty, the paint chipping off and the metal corroded in some parts, but Bucky's bike is the best thing he's got going for him at six years old. He'd found it abandoned behind a dumpster down by the docks and his ma had let him keep it as long as he didn't let his sisters ride on it - scared that it'll fall apart with them on it, probably, though why she isn't scared about that happening with _Bucky_ on it, he doesn't know. Doesn't really care, either, since it's his bike and his treasure and he'll protect it at any costs, hear that?

He's practicing tricks on it in one of the back alleys when he hears sounds of fighting. Bucky's smart. He's pragmatic. Whatever his mischievous smile and quick-flitting eyes might say about him, he stays out of trouble, and he knows how to avoid the ones who hit hard at school; it helps that he's big for his age. But something - something makes him walk his bike around the corner, still half-on it so that he has to waddle awkwardly forward and poke his head out and the sight there makes his hands clench white-knuckled on the handlebars.

There's one small blond kid - real small, shrimplike, but loud too, making a great deal of noise at the other boys - surrounded by three other ones, and they're circling him like he's an animal or they're animals. Big boys too, bigger than Bucky, and he thinks about putting his feet up on his pedals and just biking back home because this isn't his fight, and he's really fast on his bike. He can get anywhere in no time, which means he could definitely get real far away from here before anyone would notice him.

But something stops him. Maybe it's the way the shrimp kid is acting, like he's somehow winning even though his nose is bleeding and he's very clearly losing. There's a confidence in him that Bucky can feel even from over here, the kind of confidence that makes him feel better even just watching it - it makes him feel heady, the way the shrimp kid is yelling and holding up his fists.

He's barely thinking as he stoops to pick up a rock, hurling it as hard as he can at the leader's head, shouting, "HEY!" and they all stop beating up on the shrimp kid for a second to look at him. "Catch me if you can!" he hollers, and then takes off, pedaling hard only for a second before he starts to hear footsteps running after him. He bikes a complicated, twisting path and then circles back fast, finding the blond boy alone and wheezing like he's about to die.

Bucky skids to a stop next to him, looking for only a second before saying, "Get on," while gesturing to the handlebars. "They might come back."

"I don't run away," says the boy between heavy breaths of air. He's even smaller up close, with big blue eyes and a mouth twisted in anger or boldness or defiance. Defiance, Bucky thinks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. "It's not _running away_ , it's called being smart. You can beat them up some other time, come on before you get blood all over your shirt and your ma beats you too. Hop up."

But still the boy hesitates. "I… I don't know how."

"It's easy," Bucky says. "I'm like the best rider in Brooklyn too." He can see the boy sizing him up, taking in his pants patched at the knee, the cowlick in his hair that he can't seem to get rid of no matter how much his mother presses it down, the rust flaking off his bike in huge patches.

And then suddenly the boy smiles and it makes something tighten in Bucky's chest, makes him grin back automatically.

"Sure," the boy says. And he may not know what he's doing but he clambers on with eagerness and determination, like it doesn't matter how uncomfortable the handlebars are or how awkward it looks, as long as he gets it eventually.

Bucky starts up, pushing hard one leg at a time to get started and then it gets easier and he presses forward, his face near the boy's back as he says, "I'm James Buchanan Barnes, by the way. You can call me Bucky."

And the boy says, "Hi, Bucky Barnes, I'm Steve Rogers."

 

**S E V E N T E E N.**

 

Bucky's seventeen when he first realizes he's in love with his best friend.

It comes with a hot, scared panic all throughout his body as though everyone nearby can suddenly see it too, has all had the same revelation as he's just had. They're out dancing, Steve's managed to get a girl for once, and Bucky's back against a wall just watching, his expression shadowed in the dark when suddenly it hits him like a freight car.

Steve. God. Steve. With his dumb smile and his soft hair and his stupid moral code that always seems to get him in so much shit. Bucky presses himself back against the wall, his heart racing. He'd been watching them dance fondly, smile on his face at the awkwardness with which Steve touched a girl, when he'd thought about what it would be like to kiss Steve.

Which he's done a lot before in the past, but this time is suddenly different.

In the past, he's thought about it in the heat of the moment when he's jerking one off in the shower - a quick, forbidden thought that brings him closer to the edge, that's all it is, people will think of anything when they jerk off, that's just how it is. Thoughts almost don't even count then, not really; if he likes to picture pressing his tongue into Steve's mouth when he's getting off then what's it to anyone? But now - now when he's sober and it's not a quick thought but a slow one, when it's: Dancing with Steve, getting to lead, one hand on the small of Steve's back pressing him close, and they're paused in the middle of a slow song, and Steve's smile is so warm and his mouth is so wet when Bucky leans in and kisses him softly, sweetly.

That's not a quick flash in the middle of a wank.

That's a. That's a _loving_ kind of thought.

That's wrong, God, he's sick. He's so wrong.

But how can he not? When Steve looks so obviously around the room for him, craning his neck a little and then smiling with relief as soon as he gets Bucky's eye contact - what kind of person could resist something like that?

Fuck, he's weak. Fuck shit god damn. He's so fucked.

 

**D A Y B R E A K.**

 

"Are you okay?" asks Steve as the men walk through the forest. Some of them are bleeding; some of them are limping. All of them are looking at Steve with newfound respect and awe. "Buck? We can slow down if you want. You and I, we can fall back a little."

"I'm fine," says Bucky.

Steve frowns, a worried line in between his eyes. That was there before they changed him, Bucky notes. "Don't play fake with me, Bucky, it's not worth it. You can admit it if you're not feeling well, they told me no one - no one ever came back from that table."

"Not everyone has you," agrees Bucky. They've been walking through the night and he feels it deep in his bones, an exhaustion like nothing he's ever felt before. Every time Steve looks at him though, he gets another surge of strength from somewhere, and the thought of slowing down hasn't even crossed his mind. He wants home; he wants his small skinny Steve again curled up in front of him, snoring lightly.

"Bucky," says Steve in a low voice, reaching out to touch the inside of Bucky's elbow. "I'm going to take care of you, you know that? From now on, it'll be me taking care of you."

Bucky looks over, holding Steve's gaze. His throat feels tight, hard to swallow. "Thought I was never going to see daylight again."

But what he really means is, _Thought I was never going to see you again_.

The dawn is cresting in front of them, a pinprick of light now that will soon spill out sprawling over the horizon. And Steve is still looking at him, his hand moving to grip Bucky's shoulder hard, fingers digging in like he's unaware of his own grip. Bucky doesn't mind. He wants Steve to grip his shoulder forever, dig in, the good sort of pain that makes everything feel more present. Reminds him that he's here and not still on the table. There's a hot feeling in his eyes, scratchiness in his throat; he has to look away.

"It'll be okay, Buck," says Steve softly beside him. "I've got you. I'm here."

Dawn comes slow, and he squints into the sun, staring at it so long his eyes water as the yellow bursts across his vision.

 

**F U R N A C E.**

 

It's cold outside at night, but warm inside the tent. Bucky attributes most of this to Steve's new furnace body - radiating heat like it never did when he was smaller. It had been assumed from the start that Bucky would be sharing a tent with Captain Rogers, but he bets that no one realized that sharing a tent really meant sharing a bed. They start every night apart, separate in their own bedrolls, listening to each other breathe. Bucky hadn't realized how attuned he was to counting Steve's breaths until Steve could breathe perfectly; it jars him, each night, the slow and easy way Steve takes in air.

And then in the middle of the night one of them always shifts, turning towards the other, pressing closer, always closer. Bucky finds himself wrapped around Steve, pressing himself into the new unfamiliar body - sometimes it's the opposite though, something that never happened in Brooklyn. Steve pressed against his back, his face tucked into Bucky's neck and shoulder. Bucky always wakes up with a whimper in his mouth when this happens, the closeness of it almost painful in how much he craves it. He thought he was never going to see Steve again. God damn. He thought Steve was going to get a letter at home informing him of Bucky's death and Steve would just let himself fall apart, no one around to make sure he drank his orange juice or took a shower frequently enough. And now he's pressed up against Bucky, sleeping heavily with his mouth in Bucky's hair.

God damn.

Fucking furnace of him. The heat of him fills the tent, making Bucky just curl tighter into his weight. Sometimes he lays on his back and Steve drapes himself on top of him, his thigh slipping in between Bucky's legs.

"Burning up," he mumbles, tilting his head to sleepily nose into Steve's hair. Still smells like Steve - out of all the things that's changed, his smell has stayed the exact same and it makes his head swim.

"Want me to move?" Steve asks back, his voice sleep-dragged and low in his chest.

Bucky's arm tightens around him and then loosens. "Can if you want."

"'M comfortable."

"Me too."

There's a few beats of slow silence, and then Steve whispers, suddenly sounding more awake, "I was so afraid, Bucky."

Bucky doesn't open his eyes, pressing down the dark panic that rises every time he thinks about Zola's table. "Of the war?"

"Of losing you."

Steve burns and burns, he's flame bursting with oxygen, and Bucky's got skin made of paper.

 

**N I N E.**

 

Nine cigarettes left. Morita took most of Bucky's when they played cards last - Bucky had just been too glad to be around the campfire to try too hard, laughing with the rest of the Howlies as Steve lost more and more and Gabe opted out on nearly every round. He'd won a few hands, taking a bar of chocolate from Dernier and one of Steve's drawings of the New York skyline, but Bucky had always been better at billiards than cards. He'd tucked the drawing right into his breast coat pocket, hiding it away as soon as he'd gotten it; the cigarettes didn't matter. None of it mattered. Steve's eyes in the dancing firelight, that mattered.

He smokes two of them keeping watch later, feeling his lungs with each inhale. Zola had admired his lungs, on the table. _Strong pair_ , he'd said. _Deep breaths now, Sergeant._

Deep breaths. He smokes through both of them steadily, and his hand doesn't shake. Doesn't shake when he's sniping, either. It shakes when he wakes up in the middle of the night and Steve's noticed, he knows he has. Now though, he's calm. Some of the others always ask him to light the end of their smokes for them; their hands shake too. All of them god damn rattle.

He smokes his third when they get back from a mission in France, his hands still soaked in blood. When he blinks, they're clean; blinks again, covered. Feels like he might be going insane. Blinks, blood. He smokes the cigarette too fast, making himself lightheaded with it, but he can't help himself - only way to make his hands look clean again.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh go when they're on leave for two days and Steve is off with Carter. Bucky's in a bad mood the entire time, but he blames it more on how pissing annoying Falsworth is being than anything else. He wants to smoke a hundred. He wants to chain smoke himself into an early grave, his fingers turned gray from ash, his head fuzzy with the aftertaste.

Steve gets back late, his eyes too bright, but Bucky knows it can't be from drinking. Must be from Carter.

"Last one," Bucky comments idly, sitting with his arms propped on his knees as he moves the last cigarette between his fingers.

"We got a mission tomorrow," says Steve, pulling his outer coat off. "Train, trying to get to Zola."

"Hmm," says Bucky. He looks from his last cigarette to Steve, flushed and happy from his four hours spent doing who the hell knew what with Peggy Carter. He smiles at Bucky, his eyes softening slightly, growing more serious at the thought of a new mission. Bucky would follow him anywhere. His small Steve from boyhood is gone, but this Steve is still the brave, bold, loud boy as always. He moves, tucking the cigarette away next to the drawing. "Maybe I'll save it till after. To celebrate."

 

**B E N I G N.**

 

People keep doing things for him, and he doesn't know why. Rogers in particular. The Soldier sits still, hands folded in his lap. He doesn't need Rogers to get him anything or bring him food. His face feels blank.

"Bucky?" asks Rogers softly. He always speaks quiet to the Soldier, doesn't want to startle the Soldier, perhaps, so he always moves carefully. "I brought you something."

He puts a record on the table, a small hopeful smile on his face. The album cover says 'Glenn Miller' written boldly across it. "You love him," he says. "I thought you might want to listen to him again."

The Soldier blinks slowly.

"I can get more," adds Rogers. "I can buy whatever you want. They gave me lots for like, saving the world or whatever." He gives a halting laugh then blushes and looks down. "So, anything. If you want like. New clothes, maybe. Or… or I know you used to really like smoking, I know it's kind of unhealthy now, but maybe I could…"

"Why?" asks the Soldier.

Rogers frowns. "I think - you - I want you to have - whatever you want."

The Soldier looks down at his hands, one metal, one real. He doesn't understand. Rogers does many things the Soldier doesn't understand. Many things. Rogers reaches out, pushes the album cover a little closer to the Soldier like that might do something. He smiles, a little eagerly.

"What… do you want… from me?" says the Soldier.

Rogers makes an expression that he can't read. He moves back, his eyebrows lifting slightly, his mouth tightening in the corners. "Bucky," he says. "I don't want anything from you. I just want you to be happy. That's it."

The Soldier stares at the table in between them, mouth frowning just barely. He doesn't understand. Rogers is being… benign. That's what he's being. It doesn't make sense to treat the Soldier like this, it simply doesn't.

 

**H O M E C O M I N G.**

 

The man on the bridge says, "Bucky?"

The man on the bridge lets him hit and hit and hit until his face is cracked and bleeding, his eye swelling shut. The man on the bridge says, "I'm with you till the end of the line," and it feels like.

Feels like door opening.

Feels like bare feet sinking into carpet, falling into bed, feels like falling. Feels like boy across the dance floor searching for something, don't know what.

The Soldier screams, hits him, " _Shut up!_ "

The Soldier drags him out of the water, heavy with injuries and coughing up water, leaves him lying there on the bank. He hasn't thought about home in decades. All he knows is following orders, clean shots with laser precision, the mouthpiece shoved between his teeth. He looks at the mission for a long while on the shore, staring at the blood, pale skin, and he feels something he doesn't remember feeling in this lifetime.

His right arm is broken; a part of him is screaming to only touch the man with his real fingers, real skin on skin, but his right arm has been snapped so he reaches out with his metal arm instead, and if it was real it would be shaking, but instead it's deadly calm as he touches the man on the bridge's face with his smooth metal fingers.

 _Steve_ , he thinks. It feels like coming home.

 

**O N E.**

 

There's only ever one kiss between them, when they're nineteen and drunk and Bucky's desperate for it. He thinks about it every time they drink now, and that's why sometimes he goes out by himself these days, if only to suppress the deep ache in his chest each time Steve's cheeks get flushed with alcohol. He has to stop himself from feeding Steve drinks, pressing more and more into his hands, trying to get him to a point of forgetfulness. It makes him feel dirty, thinking those thoughts, and if anything, it makes him make Steve drink _less_ , to avoid touching this scummy part of himself.

But tonight, tonight they're equally drunk of their own accord, no dastardly manipulation on anyone's part, just pure boyhood. Alone in their shitty little apartment they got since Steve's ma died and he was living on his own otherwise - Bucky could have stayed with his parents, but there was no way he'd let Steve ever live alone. It meant stressing about money and making his own meals and doing his own laundry, but it also meant they could get drunk in their living room if they wanted, completely alone.

Too drunk. The room is spinning in his head, or his head is spinning in the room. The floor feels like it's tilting back and forth and he stands up and then immediately falls over, laughing hard.

"Steve," he says from the floor, reaching his hands up for the boy still on the couch. "C'mere. C'mere, sweetheart." He likes to call Steve sweetheart in his head. He likes to call him baby and sugar and honey, but none of it can ever come out, ever. Except maybe now.

"No," says Steve, slurring. "'M too comfortable here. Commortable. Commutable. Com-fort."

" _Stevie_ ," whines Bucky, scooting closer on his back and gripping Steve's ankle. He tugs on it. "World is too big. Come down here. Please, Stevie," he tugs harder.

"No," says Steve again, but he moves slightly to look at Bucky and sways, moving too far and then toppling off the couch. They're in a pile together, limbs tangled together, and Steve's pressing Bucky into the ground - and Bucky kisses him, just there on the mouth just like he's always thought about doing. It doesn't feel real for a moment, just skin to skin, and then he is aware of lips moving and a tongue against his. It's sloppy and messy, breathing into each other before Steve starts laughing against him and then falls to the side.

Bucky pants, suddenly feeling dead sober as he stares at the ceiling. His hand shakes as he brings it to his mouth, touching his wet lips, feeling Steve's spit there. Steve, in his mouth. Steve's tongue in his mouth. His dick feels rock hard now. "Steve," he whispers, scared to look over. Scared to think of Steve staring at him or freaking out or regretting it or hating him - and when he hears nothing, he closes his eyes tight for a moment and then forces himself to look and Steve is already asleep, face pressed into the wooden floor.

Everything in him tightens and then relaxes and Steve does not remember anything the next day and Bucky never says. But he always remembers.

 

**F R E I G H T  C A R.**

 

The metal is cold in his hands, the wind whipping against his face as he stares at Steve reaching for him from within the train. "STEVE," he shouts, the word ripping away as soon as he says it, and Steve shouts, " _Hold on, Buck_ ," and Bucky can't, he can't. He kicks his legs out, trying to pull himself up to meet the man leaning down towards him - gotta get back inside, gotta protect Steve's six, gotta make sure no one else tries to hurt the greatest hero Bucky's ever known - and then he feels the metal railing judder against his hands, fracturing.

And he knows.

 _Steve_ , he thinks, staring up. Longing.

"Reach," Steve begs, bending even more precariously out of the car. "Buck, _please_."

He's always loved him. He always has, from day one to this moment here, hurtling through the snowy mountains with his death miles beneath him.

He's gotta say it. Now, with the metal railing shaking under his weight and it feels like ten years have passed with him hanging off the train but it's been less than a minute, and he opens his mouth, he shouts again, "Steve!" and when the railing snaps off, he can only see the anguished look on Steve's face as he starts the long fall down. Pinwheeling, spinning, sky and snow and sky and Steve, disappearing in an instance like it was never there at all.

Longing.

**Author's Note:**

> u guys can find me on [tumblr](http://paperweave.tumblr.com/) if u want more, i'd love to chat!!!!! i'm v friendly


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